Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

I welcome these Gnus bearing free gifts! (valid to say "free gifts" in this context, with free as in software freedom. It's redundant to say "free gifts" with "free as in beer" as the word "gift" by itself implies "free as in beer"). [On Grimm, they mentioned that "gift" means "poison" in German, {'Geschenk' is the german word of the english word "gift"}so is it necessary to disavow that meaning? Free as is beer not as in poison?]

In Old High German "gift" meant "that which has been given", very similar but slightly more neutral to the English gift; in modern German you can still see traces of that in "Mitgift" = dowry.

The modern meaning goes back to the word being used as an euphemism for poison ("the deathly gift") and that meaning becoming dominant over time. As the meaning changed the word also changed its genus from female "die Gift" (still "die Mitgift") over male to the neuter ("das Gift")."Die Gift" = donation/present was sti

Ubuntu is a tough enough sale and that's with some proprietary stuff added on. Don't even want to know if Trisquel can play DVDs out of the box or not.

Well since Windows 8 can't play DVDs out of the box, I'm guessing they are going to be even on that one.
But I think putting Windows 8 "out of the box" up against nearly any Linux distribution is going to look bad for Windows 8. Can Windows 8 read pdfs out of the box? Word documents? Excel spreadsheets?

Well, the question is how easy it is to get these things installed. For me, Linux is no issue, and I totally see how it is easier to type yum install [whatever] or apt-get install [whatever] -- but that makes most people balk.

Unfortunately, searching for programs is not always straightforward. Even experienced users get hung up. For example, I like the photo viewer formerly called GQview, but which is now named so badly the only way I can ever figure out what to type for the [whatever] part of the instal

...I totally see how it is easier to type yum install [whatever] or apt-get install [whatever]...

Or pacman -S whatever, or emerge whatever, or equo install whatever... or zypper install whatever (unless you are using an older version of Suse where you use rug install whatever), or slapt-get --install whatever.

It can read PDFs - in a full-screen Metro-UI viewer that makes it completely impossible to do things like read documentation for a computer program while you also use that program. It also comes with a Metro picture viewer that has replaced the classic photo viewer, that goes full screen for the same effect - if you are designing a web page and have a browser and html editor open, boom they are gone and you are back to a metro-ui phone interface when you close your full-screen image. Windows 8 is a shitpile

As much as I love the GNU/Linux philosophy, I would rather give someone Linux Mint (over Ubuntu) as it plays multimedia out of the box! I have converted many to Linux this way (sorry, GNU/Linux) and the other week installed Xubuntu on a work mate's old laptop over Windows XP and had it running like new again. How chuffed he was, he said it was like having a brand new laptop again!!!!!

My first thought when i saw the distro they choose to handout was "failure". It won't install on the new windows 8 desktop because of the secure boot without messing with the efi module at (are the computers sold by MS at the MS store required to have the secure boot disabled?) it won't play any of their media unless for some odd reason they have been saving it all in.ogg . It won't contain the necessary drivers. No flash(no hulu, or flash games or about 90% of strea

No flash(no hulu, or flash games or about 90% of streamed media) no Silverlight(by extension no netflix) no Adobe reader(so no overdrive ebooks from the local library) no idevice support.

Should be an unofficial repo somewhere for Flash. I could install Silverlight from Moonlight, but fuck it. I don't even use Netflix. Adobe Reader? Are you kidding me? Ever heard of xpdf and Okular? I am not sure but Amarok/Clementine might have sync capabilities, if you need that. (Clementine works fine with my Android).

If you pay attention I specified adobe reader for a reason - no overdrive (overdrive being very common common library ebook lending drm system)as that only runs with adobe. As for flash you either have the old out of date Linux plug-in for Firefox or the pepper api in chrome but not iirc chromium. Neither Chrome nor the flash plugin would be in a gnu approved OS, and average Joe has no clue what a repo is much less find a trisquel specific one as it is aimed at free as in Stallmans definition of free thus

It's an Ubuntu based distro, but w/ what the FSF calls 'Libre-Linux' - Linux w/ all the binary blobs w/o source code removed. One can read more about it here [trisquel.info]

Actually, this is one of the ways that the FSF, having failed to deliver on HURD for all practical purposes, and having been rebuffed in their attempts to get Linux to go GPL3, are trying to get a Linux that is more Stallman and less Torvalds. Honestly, they should just do the HURD project more seriously, instead of trying to pass off other people's

if it weren't for Mr. Torvald's kernel, the GNU project would be still spinning its wheels.

Creating a kernel is easy. How long did it take Linus? Certainly not DECADES. Were it not for GNU, Linus's kernel wouldn't have done ANYTHING, and we'd STILL be waiting for him to get a decent compiler and userland tool suit running. Think about it. "I'm going to install the Linux Kernel!" "Why, it just sits there not doing a damned thing, doesn't even have a file system." Seriously. People make Monolithic Kernels all the damn time [osdev.org], it's not even hard. I wrote such a kernel and boot loader in x86 ASM in about two weeks worth of evenings for my toy OS. Linus' was just the first one to come along, and that's good enough for FLOSS. It sucks that GNU gets dropped from the name given how much MORE work was put into it than the dead simple kernel Linus wrote, and it really sucks that he didn't use the "at your option any future version" text in the license, -- I mean, he made it impossible to change the license why? It's not like commercial folks couldn't stay with GPL2 "at their option". I don't know man, you sound like you're putting Linus on a much higher pedestal than you need to. Great guy and all, but come on, what he did was and still is a TINY fraction of the work.

You jest, but that's exactly what many folks have done, investigate the prior link. Tellingly: You don't need to make your new kernel compatible with "the linux kernel" to get driver support, nope, you just implement ELF and use GNU gcc, and bootstrap a host of other GNU code. Hey, but don't take my word for it smart guy, click that link in my post. Wow, already done. Even sooner than your 2 week deadline. Do I get a fucking cookie now? Seriously, The Pedestal Is Too Tall.

I find your comment pretty damn silly considering the link I provided you with many examples of OSs that have done exactly what you ask,

All I saw was a LONG a list of half baked projects, toys, and experiments.

"single user multitasking""the next version will support DLL files!""status alpha""status early development""FreeDOS is ideal for anyone who wants to bundle a version of DOS""This is basically a dead project."

Ooh this one looks ready to go, we'll just run it right off the whiteboard!

Sure, making a skeleton kernel based on existing documents isn't too bad. Booting x86 is a pain in the ass, but not hard for an experienced programmer, but making a working system that has everything it needs is quite a different challenge. If it's so easy to make a kernel, how come the GNU project still can't produce a working kernel? HURD has been spinning it's wheels pretending to be something since 1990 (1986 if you count the previous attempt at making a kernel). If it were easy, why don't we have m

If creating a kernel is so easy, should we be expecting a production-ready GNU-branded kernel any year now?

Yes I realise the difference between monolithic kernels and the Hurd microkernel, but the important point still stands- if Linux or some other well implemented kernel hadn't come along, GNU would still be a decades-old curiosity project. Attention would have been far more likely to switch to BSD than GNU, in the absence of a working kernel, and the tools we know and love would be nothing.

It's not just the name. Most GNU software just sucks ass. Just go to the GNU software [gnu.org] page, and look at all the stuff that's there. Most of them are just too basic to be useful. As it is, the 'libre' philosophy means that there usually ain't the drivers to enable most of the stuff, making it a non-starter. Much of it is made usable by projects such as Debian, which RMS has needlessly vilified.

As a brand name, Linux has a mixed reputation - partly due to GNU, and partly due to the extremely fragmented

This! If creating a kernel is so easy, how come HURD still ain't complete? They tried several microkernels - Mach 3, L4, Coyotos and Viengoos, and all were disastrous. One thing they didn't try was Minix 3.0 - while that is under a BSD license, the FSF guys could have legally forked it under a GPL3 license, added whatever drivers they needed to the user space as well as all the HURD servers, and built themselves a complete kernel that they could have called HURD. Once that was done, they could have put

Oh really? If creating a kernel is sooo damned easy, then why didn't anyone, you know, ACTUALLY DO IT? Right now, Linux can and does exist without any GNU involved - ever heard of, you know, Android?

Yep! You replace the GNU userland with Android userland because the Linux kernel needs a userland. Like I said, if it hadn't utilized the GNU userland it wouldn't have taken off, no one would have used it, it would still be in development. Android didn't exist and BSD was in a legal mire, besides BSD has a nice kernel already, why would anyone have adopted a rough around the edges new kernel (Linux)? Man, it's like I'm explaining logic to a child... Whelp, my code's compiling and the coffee's brewing so

Ironically, the phrase has actually taken on new relevance in recent years. Android is Linux, but not GNU/Linux. Arguably it's Java/Linux. People often say things like "Android is based on Linux, but it isn't REAL Linux"- what they actually mean is it's Linux, but not GNU/Linux. We pedants can embrace this new language for whole new layers of clarity.

Not that that makes any difference to "the dude on the street" of course, so I guess your point still stands.

if it weren't for Mr. Torvald's kernel, the GNU project would be still spinning its wheels.

True, but where would Linux be without GNU?The GNU project created all the other parts of an operating system, and then Linus created a kernel.He built it using GNU, and he built it to use GNU.Linux didn't replace GNU; it is de facto part of GNU.

He could of used assorted other lesser known utils or maybe used the ones from BSD after they beat AT&T. As it stands now there are a number of Linux sans gnu OS's out their, Android being the largest inferno a interesting set of programs that i have contemplated playing with i like a number of concepts plan9 had. Also as to your saying "Linux is part of defacto part of GNU" even Stallman would and has said your full of sh!t on that one. And don't go say "well call it gnu/linux then" as there are a whol

Doubt it. If Linux wasn't doing such a great job FreeBSD would be a lot more popular.

It was always kind of an HD-DVD/Bluray situation there anyways. In the early days both were just about as good as the other. The market seemed to rally behind Linux instead, it got most of the development work, and so it took off (and today is legitimately the better of the two technically), but if the same momentum had been behind FreeBSD it would be just as good.

Because the FSF doesn't support projects that integrate (or allow the integration of) proprietary bits and pieces. This includes firmwares that need to be loaded on a device prior to operation, so there's a fair amount of hardware with completely open drivers that don't work on Trisquel because they omitted the firmware.

Because the FSF doesn't support projects that integrate (or allow the integration of) proprietary bits and pieces. This includes firmwares that need to be loaded on a device prior to operation, so there's a fair amount of hardware with completely open drivers that don't work on Trisquel because they omitted the firmware.

Thanks for the explanation. Whilst it makes sense from an idealistic point of view, I can't help feeling that it's one of those great ideas that could ultimately do more bad than good - espe

It's silly because they would cease to complain about the firmware if it were stored on the device. Lack of this baseline capability (and simple things like the ability to play mp3/m4a) is what ensures I won't use it.

would the FSF rather someone stick with Windows if they are unable to use a FSF approved Linux distribution

The FSF is on the far end of things, anti-copyright, anti-patent and taking a "closed source software is immoral stance." They lead the charge, though, and we're way, way past the halfway

Unfortunately it does seem to be the case nowadays. The FSF have done some great things in the past but this is just stupid, giving people copies of a distro which won't act at they expect, and when they search for help they won't find it as it's a marginal distro. They'll just think they've given Linux a try and throw it away, whereas at least with something like Ubuntu or Debian they'd be more able to find forums where they'd be more likely to get given help and less likely to have ideology preached at

They're getting desperate. This is like a church handing out pamphlets outside of a movie theater or arcade. It'll all go in the garbage, and end up being a waste of time and resources.

That is called advertising, and its just how things work. Would you feel better if it was a multi-million dollar smear campaign, like Microsoft is buying [and openly I might add], or backroom deals done with politicians and companies. This is how Google make money. In fact this sort of advertising is how advertising should be to "inform" not "brainwash". Now you could argue its poor use of time and money compared to some alternative, but as time is freely given, and CD's are pretty disposable your answer w

Then you need to give up on the Microsoft store, and focus on corporate consumers and IT admins, because those are the people who keep MS alive. MS at the consumer level is a joke, no one WANTS their product, it's just the path of least resistance. Get it out of the corporation and your task is complete, but IT admins are well and truly sold on ActiveDirectory and their ability to micromanage settings on user machines at an individual basis. Sometimes I can't argue with them either, as users really are reta

I'm a sole developer in my shop (in addition to being our Linux server admin). My workstations all run Debian and I'm about as pro-GNU as you can get. With that said, if it weren't for Active Directory keeping our end users from random acts of jackassery, our entire organization would have degraded to a Mad Max-esque wasteland where roving bands of IT geeks roam the cubicle ranges keeping everything in check manually.

Because you need elevated privileges in Windows for certain things and you could lock down things more tightly in Linux? Forget it, this isn't a technical problem.

It's one where managers cannot stand the idea that you, peasant, could do anything on their machine that they can't, no matter how little they know about it. They will DEMAND admin privs on their machines and they will also be the ones that you have to spend most of your time on because they tried to "adjust" something and of course it blew the wh

To beat any incumbent you need to offer better products. MS isn't just a Windows desktop, it's the server, terminal services, AD, DNS, DHCP, Exchange, SQL, IIS,.Net, Sharepoint and a whole hoard of other stuff that works, and works nicely together with very little effort. As much as the Linux fanbase would this not be true, there is no linux solution that even comes close to this. Sure you could cobble together a bit of this and a bit of that that sort does something similar, but it takes 10x as much effort, only has 1/2 as many features, and is a nightmare to support or troubleshoot when it breaks (or a new guy comes onboard and has to figure out your homebrew mess you created.

Exactly. Hell look at how Linux as an "OS" is managed, you got fifty billion little fiefdoms, NONE of which are ruled by one grouped or even really has to talk to one another on a regular basis, and then all these "little programs written by little groups with their own agendas" get slapped together and called an OS.

Now this works just great on a SERVER for several reasons. 1.- Removing the GUI and sound subsystems cuts out a LOT of complexity and overhead, 2.- You can "mix and match" to build a system that is right for the jobs your company is doing, 3.- MSFT prices itself very stupidly in that market, with Windows SBS costing $400 a pop, so 4.- Even after hiring an admin at 6 figures you are still gonna be ahead in a large org by the money you save not dealing with the mess that is Windows Server licensing.

But on the desktop this is exactly reversed, you HAVE to have a well built GUI and sound subsystem and frankly X-Server is a crashy mess, and Pulse is a bad joke, the users WILL NOT put up with CLI fiddling and "open up Bash and type" like a server admin would, and finally the cost for most users is practically zero because with trialware the OEMs end up getting windows Home and Basic for free, maybe even make a few bucks which they can use to lower the price.

So I'm sorry but Linux just isn't in the same league as OSX and Windows when it comes to ease of use, user friendliness, stability..its just not even in the same ballpark. I would argue that "free as in freedom" all volunteer doing your own thing nature that so many in the Linux community prizes so highly also insures that it never ever will be up to the task of standing in the same arena with OSX and Windows, because you just can't have the level of QA and QC with everybody doing their own thing. The X-Server guys don't listen to the DE guys who don't listen to the Pulse guys and so on so all it takes is ONE of these groups to change a pointer in the right spot and the whole thing falls down like a house of cards. Go look up the rant Thom that runs OSNews had when he tried to watch a video while chatting and the whole system crashed, its THAT kind of shit, probably caused by the video player team expecting something to be A when the X-Server team changed it to B, that gives Linux a bad rep.

I have said before and I'll say again not a single distro can pass the "Hairyfeet challenge" yet, not one. We take one of the user friendly distros like Ubuntu or PCLOS and install it side by side with Vista, along with a range of average software. We make sure ALL the drivers are working, then we update both to current. The vista machines WILL have 100% working drivers and software, the Linux system? Will be a mess. heck in just the last 5 years we've seen the devs gut both the DEs and the audio and wireless subsystems so good luck getting those systems to update without making a mess.

Until one can pass the Hairyfeet Challenge with flying colors, where every driver and every program still runs without a single forum hunt? Then I'm sorry but your product simply isn't in the same league, end of story.

Find me a windows system where every driver works without a single forum hunt... You're delusional. I use windows almost exclusively, mostly because I game a lot, and I have problems requiring forum hunting all the time.Just today I've spent ages trying to get this stupid usb headset driver to work in 7x64. Apparently Rosewill still hasn't made it easy after however many years 7 has been out.

A normal user using Ubuntu or another well crafted distro will have a computer exactly as messed up as their windows

I just built a from-scratch brand new system. Every part from the mobo to the graphics card is current-generation and fairly high-end. While Win7 SP1 didn't have the drivers out of the box to use its network interface (somewhat surprisingly; I wouldn't have expected the mobo's built-in gigabit Ethernet to be that different from those in the days of Win7 and on older PCs Win7 always recognized the network for me), Win8 did. It also supported the graphics card (I installed the Catalyst drivers anyhow because

Hell look at how Linux as an "OS" is managed, you got fifty billion little fiefdoms, NONE of which are ruled by one grouped or even really has to talk to one another on a regular basis, and then all these "little programs written by little groups with their own agendas" get slapped together and called an OS.

Ah, and the spewing of hate begins. These diverse distros don't really matter because all the "communication" happens in the projects that these distros are comprised of. But the only ones that really ma

The only times I've ever had X crash was due a faulty proprietary graphics driver (and honestly, there's no way an OS supplier can protect against that). My home PCs had no X crash for about a decade. My Laptop hasn't had an X crash ever.

Speaking of better products, see whether you can read this [fsf.org] until the end without laughing out loud. Personally, I broke at the point where they compared FSF membership card to a $50 iTunes card. I mean, seriously?

I have written descent sized projects on Open/LibreOffice(.org) and never had a problem with it. What were your problems with it exactly? My only problem so far has been when i tried opening a MSWorks document and a recent bug with long load times for.RTF documents in LibreOffice.

When I did this (late 2010) Open Office had some weird undo behavior when you had pictures in the document. You would do something like increase a font which would move pictures to new pages. Say you don't like it you press undo but things won't return to the previous state. It turns out that pictures had some kind of anchor or something that would not be affected by undo. Office 2010 was coming out and it had that killer live preview feature. On one side I had Open Office that could not do proper undo and

Every new computer at the store includes Windows, so you have to pay for it even if you don't want it.

That must suck for people buying Macs.

Face it, the demand isn't there. That's the problem that's being ignored. Big names like Dell have tried to market systems with alternative operating systems, but the sales don't justify it. I can't see how sending two guys and a furry to intercept shoppers is going to help either. If anything, having people see them getting hauled off by security is going to put a negative image in people's minds.

Big names like Dell have tried to market systems with alternative operating systems

They haven't, really. They make half-hearted attempts and go back and forth with Microsoft on it. In the server land it's another deal entirely but in the consumer world, Dell is pretty much balls-to-the-wall Microsoft.

You admit that Dell treats the server market differently. Why is that? It's not because Microsoft has surrendered in the server market. If anything, Windows Server 2012 shows a lot of effort to compete in that space. Dell handles multiple environments in the server market because that's where the demand is. Dell's number one job is to make money. Linux makes money in the server realm.

Why is the consumer market different? It's because Dell's consumer customers are balls-to-the-wall Microsoft, even if

Dell has never tried to market Linux systems in my neck of the woods. Briefly, it was possible to find Ubuntu-loaded desktops in the bowels of their website, but you needed to know it was there and go looking for it. That lasted all of about one year in my market, before they disappeared again.

The only time in my life I've seen Linux machines on shelves being advertised (excluding Android) was during the initial Netbook craze; and that was notable for just how awful the Linux distros chosen really were. I m

There is demand. The problem is it is too complicated to mix and match. Apple's stuff sorta works because they have are not trying to sell Microsoft. Consumers get that. Consumers already are presented with too many decisions. Dell can't sell GNU/Linux. To the extent they offer it the solutions suck.

... I ordered a Dell laptop with Linux preinstalled on it this afternoon. $319 for a 15" laptop, and the same configuration with Windows 7 on it was $50 more. Dell does sell Linux on hardware that consumers would want, but they put it in the small/medium business section of their website. And to address another point you made, everything that laptop has in it is Intel reference hardware... given how well Intel is supporting/developping for Linux, I think that says Dell understands very well the importance of not relying on proprietary binary blobs for drivers.

You're not getting it. Debian provides both software that has source code w/ it, and separately, it offers software that doesn't include its source code to those who do not insist on that. In other words, Debian does the cleanest thing possible - it offers its users completely liberated software (I prefer using this to the term 'free' for obvious reasons), and since that may not be adequate for everyone, particularly the non techno-savvy, they offer the un-liberated software separately. The problem that

Those AOL CD-ROMs at least worked - it's just that one didn't need a gazillion of those once one had made use of one to install on his computer. With most Linux CDs that I've tried, at least in the 90s, they'd never recognize the network card, and so I was out of luck, except for playing a few games. That's probably better today, but there are still issues about recovery & restoration of software.

Actually, if I go into my local Incredible Connection (a local computer retail chain in South Africa, more fondly called the the terrible infection, incredible decption etc) and buy a brand new laptop with windows and ask about support I get told pretty much exactly the same thing. If want windows support in this country, it costs me roughly $20 an hour extra, more if I want to phone microsofts support line directly because it's an international phone call for me. Sorry, support costs no matter the operatin

No, it's still an awful name. There is a history of computer products using non-English words as names, such as Ubuntu, Adobe, and Amiga, but the words themselves have to sound good or catchy, and ideally have a strong definition behind it which those who look into it will identify with. 'Trisquel' is a weak-sounding word and given the definition I don't see why people outside of the Isle of Man and Galacia would be interested enough to remember it.

Well, it's a distro that started out at Vigo University which, obviously, saw a symbolism with the triskele (a perfectly cromulent English word). So Trisquel has nuance for the non-English people, for whom Galician localisation was a factor in forking debian.

And regional symbolism is important for a people that identify as neither Spanish nor Portuguese but the Celts that predated the Romans. And the Celtic theme isn't just in the distro's icon but the codenames for each release. Gone are "raring", "warty

Not Unity. All the 'libre-Linux' distros have GNOME 3 instead, but in fallback mode, since the drivers that use GPU video acceleration are binary blobs, which is a non-starter for any 'libre-Linux'. So they go w/ GNOME 3 in fallback mode, but given that GNOME 3.6 is supposed to lose fallback mode, I wonder whether they will still be going w/ that. Maybe if GNOME 3.6 offers GPU based video acceleration w/ source code, they may be fine w/ it, but I don't know that that's the case.

Since when did RMS have anything to do w/ BSD, beside persuading them to make the OS free - which they did, while declining to make it copyleft as well?

And you are trolling in other ways as well. Microsoft built NT from scratch, using the guys who did VMS (Dave Cutler) and Mach 3.0 (Rick Rashid). That was in no way BSD, much less GNU. NEXTSTEP was built using Objective-C, which Apple too used in making Darwin and OS-X. Xenix came & went - never remained a long term part of Microsoft - it was more

You are conflating 'free software' and 'open source' - something that RMS and the FSF would frown on. 'Free software' does not allow companies to make money, since it bans them from restricting re-distribution. Open source, by contrast, can be incorporated in code that disallows re-distribution, depending on the license that is used. Open Source software is used when companies want to have a control on their future in a way they can't if their software provider going away or going belly up would result i